A Doomed Battle

Oct. 23

A Doomed Battle

This is a conceptual scene that I used to construct two otherwise un-designed characters for Knights of the Dark Age. I wanted to present a very simple and straightforward example of light vs. dark themes of characters who are inherently a dichotomy of how they are presented. The Harbinger's Children are divine and made to destroy the dark Eclipses. The Nightbringers have secret knowledge of the world and a strong justification for their actions against the Gods with all of mankind on their collective conscience. The people of the Tribes of Theia are obsessed with recovering the status quo of a blissful era of absolute rulership and direction. The Heretics of the world seek freedom from all authority but that of humans who are equipped with complete knowledge and understanding of the pain and suffering of man. The forces of Theia believe in faith, fate, miracles and righteousness whereas the House Scalla works in the shadows and undermines the efforts of the Gods and the faithful, engineering the vacuum of power in the world and violating the order of all things arcane and holy.

Ultimately, what I was getting at was the fact that the darkest elements had some bright glimmers of light, and that the brightest powers bore the deepest and most troubling shadows.

The man in white is one of the Harbinger's Children, Dorn, tasked with restoring the pantheon and the seat of power in the land of Theia through heroic feats and Heroic development, from the hands of the powerful Nightbringers and their ultimate Lords of the dark, the Eclipses. He is a starightforward and generally relaxed individual, whose limitless temperament and easygoing approach to life and especially urgent matters is a constant cause of frustration to his close friends and allies, even though he has an unfailing willingness to march into any effort to save the people he loves and protect the land that he holds dear from his enemies. He always takes in the information of his situations and makes the according considerations quietly and often on his own, often pleasantly surprising those who were once worrisome in placing their faith in him and quickly earning the unmitigated trust of all who he encounters.

Dorn fights with a small shield and arming sword and is clad in medium armor, and he fights with a thoroughly-checked ferocity that ebbs and flows with the tide of events around him on the field. He is not one to charge off in a fight, a he understands the value of maintaining formations and appreciating the presence of allies in pitched battles and that despite his incredible proficient capabilities as a tactician and warrior alike, his fighters' morale and ability to see what he may no on his own are far more valuable to the movement of an overall victory than his own solitary effort.

Dorn generally sees himself as a part of a whole, one-fourth of the Blessed Children, a weapon in an army, a factor in a movement. By this reasoning, he wants to relinquish the role of leadership to another of the Blessed Children and do what makes them as a whole the strongest they can be.

Sadly, Dorn is the first of the Harbinger's Children to meet his doom, indirectly becoming the catalyst that sets the tragic course of the Blessed Children into motion, ultimately breaking Spala's heart, Alan's willpower, and Mikul's life.

The character opposite Dorn is Osse, the Fourth Eclipse. He, like all the other Eclipses, was raised through a brutal life of battle and hardship conditioning him to develop into Heroism by the Path of the Accursed (ascension to a Hero without the aid of a god) so that he can wage open war with the gods of Theia and free humanity of the shackles of servitude to the unknowable and unappreciative Divine. Osse is the fourth among the Eclipses - and thereby all Nightbringers - and is a man of extremely great strength, having lived through countless trials and battles over his hundreds of years of life as an Accursed Hero. He is an excellent warrior who can manage vastly outmatched odds in a battle, even against the Blessed Heroes of the Shining Age and is duly confident in his heroically enhanced abilities to lead the fight against the strongest enemies of all sorts, be they many or few, renowned or unknown, divine or mundane.

As a man who has seen the end of all sorts of beings in the world of Theia, Osse understands the value of persistence and a steeled mind in battle, even recognizing that that very Gods themselves are capable of falling to the blades of a Hero who can persist through the elemental fury of a being fueled by an aspect of nature. When the Operation to take the Shining Palace reached it's climax, Osse was the first to reach and destroy one of the prefect beings, spilling the ichor of the Divine and showing the other Eclipses that the Gods are aware and afraid of their vulnerabilities and that they can be made to suffer the price for their past indiscretions upon a humanity made with the Power of Potential.

Osse wears a long curved blade and a shield, both made of a special material that is metallic in all properties other than in appearance which looks similar to dark, wet stone. This material is especially favorable to Heroes and magic users alike as it channels and adopts the types of energies involved with extreme ease and is reasonably well-suited for Heroes to fight with because it is incredibly heavy and does not dull or shatter easily, so a Hero - being gifted with ridiculous strength and nigh-limitless endurance - can handle such a weapon with ease while maintaining the ability to stagger enemies several weight-classes above themselves. His armor is made of patterned steel plate and mail, relatively simple, and largely decorative because Heroes are inherently highly resilient to most typical attacks when unarmored. Osse wears an unusual amount of armor because it hearkens back to a time when he was a mortal and would rely on it to allow him to shrug off the attacks of his foes and wear down the willpower of his prey so he can focus on breaking their defenses. The design of the armor is indicative of the style of appearance that pre-Shining Age warriors from the House of Scalla, the Family name of the two Greatest of all Human warriors Versa and Damis.

The result of Osse's extremely goal-oriented approach to his mission in life is that the Nightbringers are able to fight the Gods and seize victory against all manner of enemies. Allowing them to realize the true potency of their vengeance and the power to impart their will on the development of mankind. That same headstrong mindset also led to the Eclipses' recognition of their own vulnerabilities and that despite being capable of slaying beings imparted by the primal forces of creation itself, Heroes are still involved in a game of extreme danger with an opponent that wields that very same order of power.

Osse, the first Slayer of the Gods was killed in battle when he was outflanked by the Shining Sentries of the Gods, Blessed Heroes imbued with incredible elemental powers of their patron Gods akin to that of Dragons and Giants. Osse, through his death taught all Heroes that even with limitless potential, one's doom can always arise from their own actions.